Detroit, Santa Barbara, Calif. and Reno, Nev. markets are currently leading the nation in recovery according to realtor.com®’s third quarter ranking of America’s top turnaround markets.
The median age of inventory dropped 17.7 percent over the same period in 2012, with typical homes selling in 84 days between July and September of this year. Median list prices rose 7.6 percent year-over-year to $199,128 in the third quarter. The number of homes available on the market dropped across the country by 3.3 percent year-over-year, with an average of 1.96 million homes on the market on any given day in the period.
Most noteworthy in the third quarter of 2013 is the acceleration in markets that have been less impacted by the highs and lows of the past several years, such as Ann Arbor, Mich., Dallas, Boston and Boulder, Colo. These markets have demonstrated more consistent, incremental improvement, and their appearance on the list may be a bellwether of stronger improvements in similar markets to come, as the national marketplace moves further into balance. All four placed within the top 25 accelerating markets in the previous quarter’s report.
“We’re noticing a clear split between markets that have experienced major highs and lows in recent years, and those that have proved more resilient,” says Errol Samuelson, president of realtor.com®. “With the recent moderation in some of the more volatile markets, the subtler acceleration activity becomes more visible.”
“The Turnaround Towns report algorithm was a game-changer in next-gen real estate analytics – a holistic perspective on real-time market statistics like price and inventory in the context of consumer search metrics, weighted proportionally across the country to effectively measure apples-to-apples market acceleration,” said Samuelson.
“It has offered tremendous insight into market dynamics during one of the most dramatic periods of economic volatility in a century, and enabled us to be the first to surface acceleration trends in many cases. In 2014 we will further evolve this trend watch tool and continue to focus on revealing standout markets as we identify, track and measure emerging developments in the marketplace at the national, regional and local levels.”
